Read The Dead Assassin: The Paranormal Casebooks of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for Free Online Page B

and pondered. “How does one move a dead body without attracting attention?”
    As he spoke the words, Cranford entered the room, balancing a tray with Conan Doyle’s brandy and Wilde’s champagne. Although he had undoubtedly overheard the remark, like all good British servants his demeanor betrayed nothing.
    “What do you think, Cranford?” Wilde asked directly. “How would you move a dead body about London without attracting attention?”
    The waiter paused to set the brandy down on Conan Doyle’s end table. “In a hearse, sir,” he said mildly. “That’s what they’re for, is it not?”
    Wilde and Conan Doyle shared a look of surprised delight.
    “Quite so,” Wilde laughed. “And we did see a hearse at the scene of the crime.”
    “Yes,” Conan Doyle agreed, “but that hearse had come to take away the body of Lord Howell.”
    “Who is to say how many bodies it took away?”
    Conan Doyle sat up in his chair, his fatigue suddenly forgotten. “You have a point. And looking back on it now, from the moment he entered the fray, Commissioner Burke seemed in great haste to wrap things up and cinch tight the bow on a murder investigation!”
    Cranford popped the cork on the champagne, charged Wilde’s flute with effervescence, and returned the bottle to its ice bucket. “Your food will be forthcoming shortly, sir.”
    Conan Doyle waited until the waiter had gone before saying, “While you were alone with the body, did you see a carriage of any kind?”
    Wilde shook his head as he swished a mouthful of Perrier-Jou ë t.
    “Hear anything?”
    The Irishman allowed champagne to trickle down his throat before adding, “I did hear something. A very odd sound.”
    “Oh, really?”
    “It was faint, but sounded something like: hissssss-ka-chung … hissssss-ka-chung …”
    “A steamer? No, it couldn’t have been, we were too far from the Thames … and no steamers would be running in such a fog.”
    They were about to continue when Cranford sailed back in with a knife, fork, and napkin, arranging them silently on Wilde’s table before nodding a bow and dissolving into the fine walnut paneling.
    “The man’s a ghost,” Conan Doyle muttered as he hefted his brandy.
    “Yes,” Wilde agreed. “Cranford does not exit a room as much as disparate from it.”
    Conan Doyle grew serious. “Speaking of servants, you don’t believe for a moment—”
    “The Italian valet was somehow involved?” Wilde paused to sip his champagne. “No. I believe the young man is entirely innocent.”
    “What about those pamphlets? Awfully incriminating.”
    “And awfully convenient. In the space of a few minutes the police commissioner’s man has time to locate the valet’s room, search it, and return with a handful of damning evidence.”
    Conan Doyle thoughtfully swirled his brandy. “Careful, Oscar. What you are suggesting smacks of conspiracy.”
    “And does that not describe most assassinations? I watched Vicente’s face as those pamphlets were produced. I am convinced he had never seen them before.”
    “And then there is the bullet-riddled body of a dead assassin. Three of us saw it and yet the commissioner showed not a jot of interest.”
    Wilde shrugged. “You know the police: why let evidence stand in the way of a good trial and execution?”
    Wilde’s comment sprung a frown to Conan Doyle’s lips. “If that happens, it will be a grave miscarriage of justice. Surely we must do something?”
    “It is no longer our concern. Let us not forget Commissioner Burke’s generous offer of free accommodation in one of Her Majesty’s least luxurious prisons. I have been known to abandon a first-class hotel on a moment’s notice should I find the towels a tad scratchy. I doubt I would find Newgate much to my taste.”
    Conan Doyle rumbled a grunt and said, “Point taken. I shall think no more on it.”
    Wilde snatched up the day’s newspaper from the end table and vanished behind it, rattling the pages from time